


Grey

by Dusty_Forgotten



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Domestic, Domestic Bliss, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Realistic, Romance, Suburbia, Witch Castiel, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2018-04-29 16:14:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 17,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5134061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dusty_Forgotten/pseuds/Dusty_Forgotten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you call two witches living together?</p><p>Broom-mates!</p><p>What do you call two gay witches living together?</p><p>Life partners.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Astromancy

**Author's Note:**

> Now with [soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpdUfmRv8UmOrLUsKPQGSu310uIaW62hZ), applicable to any situation in need of witchy vibes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by stars.

“Besides the aliens, scientology’s opposed to psychology because Hubbard refused to be treated for paranoid schizophrenia.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a cult leader.” Crowley acknowledges as Castiel slides off the hiking trail and climbs onto the trunk of a fallen tree. Crowley follows along.

“It’s a fascinating religion.” Cas goes on.

“Cult.”

“Most cults are religions.”

“And most religions are cults.”

Castiel rolls his eyes, but takes the offered hand as he reaches the end of the log and hops off, crunching autumn leaves on impact. “Not all rectangles are squares, Crowley.”

“But all squares are rectangles.” He smiles through the other’s glare. They’re still holding hands. “Shall we?”

Cas tries to remain chiding as he flips his backpack over his shoulder. “I’ll pour the salt, you light the candles.”

So it begins. Castiel walks clockwise, pouring out a thick layer of salt in a circle, slightly lopsided in the way it’s nestled between trees. Crowley follows with four pillar candles for four cardinal directions, igniting each with a butane lighter. He meets Cas at the end, and offers up the lighter. Castiel brings the tip of a sage bundle to a smolder, and hands it back.

“You know, white sage is endangered.” Crowley gibes as he sits just south of centre.

“And _you_ know I grew this myself.”

Rolling his eyes, Crowley spreads a square (rectangular) remnant of black velvet on the ground before him while Cas smudges the circle in smoke. He finishes, and shoves the bundle in front of Crowley, who bats it away. “Hey, keep the stench to yourself.”

“I’m cleansing you of that overwhelming negativity.”

Crowley looks at the sage, and blows it out. Castiel narrows his eyes, and takes a seat with his back to Crowley’s- but takes the two tealights passed to him. He unlatches the gold clasp on a wooden jewelry box, already set in its place before him. It’s an antique, with an age-dusted mirror in the lid and red-upholstered tray that rises out of the box as the hinge spreads. He slots a tealight into either side of the tray, and stands up the votive holder he’s consecrated as a cauldron. He’s awash in calm, just looking at it- though that may be the charm bottle hung in one corner.

Crowley, conversely, has a single black jarred candle (Cas has no idea how he can complain about the smell of sage when that smells like _burning sulphur_ ), a deck of tarot cards, and a book Cas knows to be his grimoire (and anyone else could guess, with the gold-leaf pentagram on the black leather cover). It is an exponentially simplified alternative to Castiel’s complete crystal collection.

This decade, a witch can cast a protection spell on an Otterbox in the same circle as a curse on the obnoxious soccer mom next door- which, coincidentally, is a ritual Cas and his significant other find themselves performing that night. More to the point: no modern secular witch does anything but roll his eyes in response to the term “black magic”- but... if Castiel were to assign colours to their practices: his would be a sort of baby blue, and Crowley would be that new super black the British scientists invented.

He thought pure hex workers were extinct- never heard of them outside of Satanic circles- but Cas hasn’t seen him use any plant that wasn’t poisonous, and they’ve been dating for two years. Going by that threefold law Wiccans abide by, Crowley should be in terrible shape from all the ill he’s sent into the world; yet, here he is, perfectly healthy ex-smoker, owns a three bedroom colonial in the nice part of town, never has trouble with his antique Bentley, and he even loves his job.

He’s a _lawyer_. Have you ever _met_ a lawyer that likes his job?

Castiel’s grounded by a snap of Crowley’s fingers. Some people end a spell with a bell, or “so mote it be,” but Crowley snaps. Cas reaches back, and touches his partner’s arm.

“Hm?”

He makes a small, negative sound of reply.

“Kitten, I’m still not an empath.” he reminds, scribbling something in the back of his Book of Shadows.

“Far from it.”

He hears paper tearing, and then flame licks, and lets his head rest on Crowley’s shoulder. Stars peek through the canopy, and he revels in the feeling of untouched earth beneath his palm.

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?” he grumbles back.

“Being romantic. You’re corrupting my energy.”

“For you?” Castiel looks to the sky as he deliberates. “Not a chance.”


	2. Empirimancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by experiment.

Having a like-minded individual close at hand is always nice for giving any spell an extra boost, but like any economist will tell you, every gain has a loss.

Castiel’s sacrifice is shelf space. The number of crystals and talismans littering their home is staggering; not to mention Crowley’s house plants, and Cas’s garden, and all the cuttings drying tied to the curtains, and packed away in mason jars... They own an astronomical number of jars- and they’re somehow always out.

There are also other... aspects, to the arrangement. Positive or negative, he’s not quite sure.

Being a witch, one must have a certain openness of mind; you can’t exactly _believe_ the universe into making something happen without belief. Every witch has their own tolerance for it- some draw the line at storm magick, others, divination. Castiel used to be of the latter, but he’s dating someone as devoted to his divinations as pagans are their deities. When you live with someone like that, there’s a suspension of disbelief to be maintained- and at this point, if Crowley were to say minotaurs were real, Cas would say, “I knew it.”

This mentality has led to more than a few awkward situations.

“What are you feeling?” Cas choked out, head thrown back and spine arched unpleasantly.

“Little light-headed.”

“Yeah,” he replied, leaning back on his significant other to stay on his tip-toes, “me too.”

Austin Osman had said the death posture could be employed to achieve “gnosis” (whatever the hell that was), but for Castiel, it just made him feel like dying.

Crowley threw his hands up as he stumbled. “Okay, this is stupid.”

“Oh, thank God.” Castiel agreed, going so far as to his knees.

“My back is killing me.”

“Same.” he huffed, accepting the soft carpet’s invitation to bury his face in it.

“I’d rather set my sigils on fire than simulate death, thank you.”

“I only activate sigils by orgasm.” Cas admitted.

“I wasn’t going to bring it up.”

“I am more than happy to bring magick into our sex life.”

Crowley joined him  in the carpet, and patted the floor until he found Cas’s hand. They laid there, fingers laced and facedown on the floor.

“...I think chakras are a load of bollocks.”

“Me _too!_ ”


	3. Symbolomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by road signs.

Though a hedge witch by nature, Castiel can appreciate the leanings of urban witchcraft. He can feel the energy coursing through subway tunnels underground, the tenacity inherent in a skyscraper. There is power in concrete, and the city is a human wonder.

Except traffic. _Fuck_ traffic.

Cas doesn’t know how Crowley does it- he’s the kind of guy to hold the horn for a good ten seconds if someone cuts him off, and if he’s put on hold, he hands the phone to Castiel- but there was, unmoving and content to do so.

The cars in front of him closed gaps, and Crowley let off the brake just enough to roll five inches before they came to a standstill again. Cas wanted to scream.

“How can you stand it?” he groaned instead.

The driver blinked at him like he’d been interrupted of deep meditation. “What, the car horns? I tune them out.”

“Wasting time.”

A shrug. “You spend your whole life wasting time. Driving, shaving, sleeping. It’s inevitable as the weather.”

If rain cancels plans, Cas goes outside to collect the falling water. You don’t defeat the cold of winter by anger alone- but you can use it to set the mood for a banishment spell. A witch is just someone who uses the power around them, and for Castiel, that power had always been nature.

“Traffic is... human nature.”

Crowley didn’t note the revelation, but it was one he had already made. He stopped at the green light, vehicle in front of him stranded in the intersection before it changed. Cross traffic honked irritably. An impasse.

Then Crowley put on his turn signal.

Cas furrowed his brow. “Our reservations are the other way.”

“Change of plans.”

He knew that look, usually unfocused in candlelight, resting on polished obsidian. Cas didn’t know what he saw in the dark, or the street signs and sidewalk menus, but he let him follow their story. Crowley cracked the window- a manual crank rod, that’s how old this car is- and breathed the exhalation of the city. A right. A later left. A reach for the turn signal, an abandonment of it. The perfect parking space.

They ate at a little diner on Third, and Crowley never gave explanation, but Castiel never asked. One of a thousand compromises.

The food was good, anyway.


	4. Pilimancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're disappointed by the length, take comfort in my upload schedule.

It’s a lovely two-story- three bedrooms, two baths, light blue with white trim- very eighteenth century. There’s Castiel’s herb garden, and Crowley’s windchime, and trees as old as the house. They spend a lot of time on the porch, or out back, around the fire pit. Neighbours jogging down the sidewalk always wave.

“Why does it smell like burning hair?” Castiel asked as he hung his coat on the antler of a deer skull.

“Because I’m burning hair.”

He followed the voice into the living room. Crowley was on the leather loveseat, a book in one hand, tumbler in the other, one foot nudging the bowl of crystals on the coffee table, glinting in the light of the fireplace. It looked relaxing- but smelled like hell. “Why are you burning hair?”

“So no one else can.” He toasted, and sipped.

It’s terrifyingly easy to curse someone. All you need is intent, and a taglock- that’s anything from hair to nail clippings- even a full name will do. Witches are dangerous, but the only ones that know it are other witches. The couple kept to themselves for that very reason; you can’t piss off someone you never meet.

Unless you’ve pissed off Crowley, who once cursed a mail sorter.


	5. Catoptromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by reflective surfaces.

Scrying is a delicate art.

It takes a particular state of mind, an open one, and a whole lot of time to get there. Castiel meditates- more to destress than reach any sort of “enlightenment”- but he’s never come close to the sort of trance Crowley slips into.

He’s been doing it so long, he can call it up almost anywhere. He reads the water in the sink, the steam over Cas’s morning tea, or the reflections off the sliding doors. If Crowley’s looking down at his phone, chances are the screen’s not even on.

It’s dark in the spare room, silent. The blinds are drawn, and he sits on the floor, a single candle on the floor and obsidian orb in his hand. It’s incredible to witness... but boring as hell to watch. Cas wouldn’t want to go in there, even if he were invited, and not just spying through the gap under the door.

Crowley set the ball down, and the carpet kept it in place. “Do you need something?”

Castiel considered not answering, if only briefly. “No.”

He heard the puff, saw the room go dark, but smoke rise up from a snuffed candle in the now-visible moonlight.

Thankfully, the door opened inward. Crowley had the globe in his hand, and looked down at Cas, side of his face pressed to the hardwood. He stepped over him and said, “Come on.”

He followed into their shared bedroom, the elaborate altar on his nightstand, and the single golden stand on Crowley’s side, where he rested the crystal ball. The empty glass top of the dresser made Castiel uncomfortable.

The top right drawer was dedicated to his magick- jars of herbs and ashes, keys and candles. He took a black satin pouch from the back, and poured out a silver chain, and amethyst point.

“Haven’t touched this in years. It’s bound to be angry with me.”

He held it lightly by the glass bead that marked the end, and Castiel marvelled in the gentle sway before it was scooped up and handed to him. “You’re better at the crystal pampering than I am. Give it a good wash, and we’ll give it a go.”

He stared down at the polished amethyst in his palm. “I’m not interested in divination.”

“Yeah you are. Telling you, kitten,” and he said this with a hand on his shoulder, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Looking down at the quartz in his palm, appearing more like a necklace than method of fortune-telling, he was inclined to agree with him.


	6. Avimancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by birds.

It was a quiet morning, a weekend without plans, and a recovery from Crowley’s late night on the phone with a client that just wouldn’t hang up. Castiel shifted cautiously out of bed to let him sleep- but Crowley opened his eyes, caught sight of the other, and smiled as they drifted drowsily back shut.

Summer was ebbing, the sun casting rays through the blinds, birds sang cheerfully-

Crowley got up, groaning, threw open the window, and yelled at the birds.

He _really_ doesn’t like birds.

He says he’s accustomed to city birds- what a bird becomes when it lives around people. Crowley calls them “arseholes.” Cas has fed ducks and pigeons, though, and they were all about as civil as one could hope from a creature with a brain the size of a walnut.

“You’ve never fed a gull,” Crowley said gravely as he pulled the sticks of a beginning nest from the oak out front, “I know, because you’re alive.”

Castiel shook his head, eyeing the owl statue on the roof. Out of the sticks cascading behind him drifted a feather, tawny and soft. He extended an arm slowly enough to not disturb the air, and it lighted down in his palm. Another hail of twigs came down, kicking it up, and the very act of reaching out to snatch it blew it further away.

To this day, he regrets losing that feather.

That’s probably the reason he bought a birdbath. He said it was just an inconspicuous receptacle for rainwater, somewhere to cleanse his tools, but he gets an immediate shock of sick satisfaction every time Crowley chases a blue jay from the stone basin.


	7. Retromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by looking over one's shoulder.

“You’re thinking of theistic. LaVeyan Satanism doesn’t believe in any deities- least of all the devil. Satan, to them, is a symbol of self, and indulgence.”

“Sounds like my kind of religion.” Crowley replied over the last of his au jus. Cas sipped his soup, and became aware of the stare on him. He cocked his head, and Crowley shrugged. “I was just wondering how we ended up a power couple.”

“Pardon?”

“A lawyer, and a doctor of sociology.”

“Soon-to-be, sociologist.” He set the spoon on the rim of the bowl. Cas was only familiar with two of Crowley’s exes- the truly awful daughter of a governor, and a paralegal at the firm he was now partnered at. “Haven’t you always dated for power?”

“Which is why it surprises me that when I finally stopped...” he reached across the small bistro table and took his hand, “you turn out to be the best I’ve had.”

Castiel said over a spoonful, “Is that a euphemism?”

Crowley choked a laugh, and mumbled into his coffee, “This is why we’re dating.”

He squeezed the hand in his, and felt before he heard the energetic shift. The air in the café wasn’t as light as it should be.

Profanity didn’t bother them; Crowley worked a high-stress job, and Cas had Gabriel for a brother. There were a rare few words, however, that could get a sneer out of Crowley, and one particularly (in)appropriate was growled at them from the table behind.

Crowley sneered.

“Don’t.” Cas warned, and his expression was nonchalant, but his back stiff.

“If he slanders me, and I hit him, it’s his fault.”

He put more force into the repetition, “Don't.”

“I know my rights- lawyer, we just went over this.”

“Then you know better than anyone how annoying lawsuits are.”

They glared at each other, and Crowley drank his coffee with a white-knuckled grip. “Aren’t you done yet?”

He gave up pushing around vegetables. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

Crowley stood while Castiel surveyed his mess. A straw wrapper he moved to his bowl, a napkin on the floor that wasn’t his, but he was a good samaritan. They walked to the trash cans, dumping plastic cups but stowing the ceramics above. Crowley snatched the napkin off Cas’s tray. He gave a questioning glance, and the other peered at the dark stain of the paper, and shifted his gaze to the man they had left at the table behind, slurping black bean soup.

Castiel narrowed his eyes. Crowley folded the napkin to quarters, smiled, and tucked it in his coat pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keepin' it G.


	8. Theriomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by animal behaviour.

While Crowley once owned a black German shepherd that was commonly referred to as the “hellhound” among his neighbours, Castiel’s only pet was an angelfish that died before he could settle on a name. To be fair, the act of bestowing a name is much like stating intention in a spell; it is Castiel’s belief it should be done with utmost certainty- but that’s just an excuse for having that fish for two months.

This, however, was not about angelfish- or dogs, or even birds (though he may want Crowley to think it was). It was about a cat.

Pamela Barnes was a lovely woman, and a gifted psychic; legally blind, but she knew the colour of Cas’s eyes from his aura. She ran a cute little magick shoppe downtown with the triple moon in the window, and pennies on the doorframe. It was the only place locally Crowley could find fresh belladonna, and while Cas can get most of his herbs from Whole Foods, he’s fond of the crystals.

He was inspecting a particularly geometric chunk of clear quartz on a low shelf when one of Pam’s cats butted under his hand. He smiled, scratching the grey long-haired behind the ear. She opened her mouth as if to meow, but only the smallest... almost chirp of a sound, came forth. He was amused by that.

“Her name’s Grace.” Pamela said, appearing behind him.

He stood, glancing for Crowley. “Is he-”

“Touching-not-touching all my oracle decks again? You bet.”

Feeling for energies, Crowley calls it. Looking a loon, according to most anyone else. He felt a cold spot on his hand, and caught the feline nuzzling it again. “I think she likes you.”

“Well, Grace, the feeling is mutual.” Another peep, and a genuine smile, however brief.

“She’s an indoor/outdoor, I got her when a friend of mine moved. Kills me to keep her inside, but the streets around here are too busy.”

“That sentiment, I also share.”

She peered up at him, and Castiel felt they had come to an understanding.

“Has your eyes.” a different voice added, and Cas was inclined to agree. Crowley had a paper bag already stapled shut, and hadn’t connected with any of the decks one could tell from his otherwise empty hands.

“Hey,” Pamela added in a tone that had the lawyer suspicious, “you live on a bit of property, don’t you?”

“Acre.” he estimated.

“Acre and a half.” Crowley corrected, and his eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I’m just thinkin’, Grace needs the fresh air- and you, Cas,” she chastised with a pointed finger, “need friends.”

He rolled his eyes at the remark, but they landed on a purring feline now wrapped around his pant leg.

“Absolutely not.”

“Oh, don’t be a downer!” Pam argued on Castiel’s behalf- which he was grateful for, because she didn’t have to live with him.

“I hate cats.” he maintained.

“You hate happiness!”

Cas himself had withdrawn from the conversation to crouch before the shelves, eye level with Grace. He held out his hand, palm up, and Grace sniffed, and put her paw in the centre.

“Juliet was a _purebred_ , you uncultured-”

“Oh, one of those genetic nightmares? I should have known you'd be that pretentious!”

“Hush, the both of you.” He was having a moment he didn’t want ruined by the bickering of two morally opposed witches.

Crowley groaned at the sight of them; Castiel cocked his head. “She may intimidate the birds.”

His groan turned to a defeated sigh as he reached into his inner jacket pocket. Crowley owned several tarot decks, which he consulted for everything from business ventures to his lunch order- but his default, his standard, and the one that travelled with him was the Rider-Waites. He gave it an overhand shuffle, an underhand, a second over, and pulled a card.

Cas didn’t know the meaning of the Three of Cups, but he did know Grace was coming home with them. Call it witch’s intuition.

Or, cat-hater Crowley’s “Dammit!" That may have given it away.


	9. Aichmomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by sharp objects.

“Dammit!”

“Cursing, angel? Didn’t think you had it in you.” Crowley mocked from the other room, and Cas sucked on his knuckle. “What’s the matter?”

He held up the kitchen knife he’d been using to gut the recent crop of parsley, his blood glinting off the thick blade. “Maybe you should put that down.”

He did- gingerly- and wrapped a paper towel around the wound as he went to join his significant other in the family room. “I’ve been particularly ungraceful lately.”

“It’s the cat. She’s offset the balance.”

“You can’t blame everything on my cat.”

“No, but I’m sure she’s responsible for the chewed leaves on my coriander.”

As if in defense, Grace meowed in her half-verbal way.

Crowley glared at the feline. “You’re adopted.” he grumbled. Grace purred.

In an attempt to mediate the dysfunctional family, Cas stubbed his toe on the coffee table. Crowley, for his part, didn’t laugh (though he may have made a face; Castiel couldn’t see from where he had curled up on the floor), but he gave a moment before suggesting, “Do you need a luck sigil?”

Cas pulled up the tail of his shirt, revealing a series of geometric symbols drawn on his skin in the eyeliner pen they kept around for that exact purpose. “Witch bottle?” He tapped the pocket it was contained in, and the crystal chips inside rattled.

Crowley got up, and moved towards the kitchen, skeptical. “When’s the last time we smudged?”

“This morning. I’ve done everything, Crowley.” The pain had subsided enough he could stand, but the floor (even hardwood) seemed the safer option.

He retrieved something from one of the kitchen drawers, and unscrewed an outlet. From within the wall he withdrew a small bottle, sealed with black wax. “I’ll make a new anti-hex bottle. Have you seen my grimoire?”

“Upstairs.”

“Really? Could have sworn I left it on the porch.” He headed down the hall, toward the stairs.

“You did.”

Crowley came backed into the living area. “...You moved my grimoire?”

“No, I left the black book with a giant gold pentagram on the cover where our Jehovah’s Witness neighbour could see.”

“Why would Helen be on our porch?”

“Who do you _think_ brings the paper to the door?”

He considered. “Maybe I should dig up that hex bottle... Besides the point. If you touched my grimoire, we found our curse.”

“You _cursed_ me?”

“There’s a reason we don’t touch my things, and it’s not just energy contamination.”

He lifted his head from the floor only long enough to glare at his partner. “Fix this.”

“Fine, fine. I’ll get the bath salts, you... try not to hurt yourself.”


	10. Hydatomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by rainwater.

It was a dark and stormy night. Rainy, miserable, really not something anyone wants to be outside during- but it was a new moon and Crowley wasn’t waiting another lunar cycle to get this done. He kneeled in the mud of Cas’s garden, trowel in one hand, curse box resting between earth and palm of the other.

“Well howdy, Crowley!”

He tried to sound as pleasant as he could manage in the rain, not looking over his shoulder at her. “Hello, _Helen_.”

The soccer mom stepped down off her obnoxiously bright floodlit porch, but stopped at their property line. There must have been at least a dozen different spells marking out that line; she better stay back. “What’s got you out in this mess?”

Ever-evasive, he rebuffed, “I should ask you, _Helen_.”

“It’s supposed to freeze tonight. Gotta protect my tomatoes!”

He heard the rain bouncing off her plastic poncho and lightning-rod umbrella, and suddenly wished he’d tried a little harder at storm magick before writing it off as the ineffability of nature. “Cas loves his hydrangeas.” It wasn’t difficult to sound annoyed.

“However does he keep those so lovely?”

It really wasn’t Castiel at all; the war water in the box turns the petals blue. “I’ll have to ask.” He kept digging, and didn’t bother to pretend he was doing anything else.

“Awww!” she sighed, and Crowley didn’t look. Probably the damn birds again. “Did you get a cat?”

He glanced then, at Grace perched regally in the kitchen window. Next to his thyme. “Cas’s.”

“Well, he’s very handsome!”

“She.” he corrected, and wondered why he cared.

“I knew you two needed a woman in your life!”

It was as awkward in its attempt at casual familiarity when the very sentence proved she had no idea what she was talking about as soccer field-sideline banter. Also, he couldn’t stand being the uncomfortable one. “You know we’re gay, right _Helen_?”

She took a breath, and let the words out liltingly. “Oh, sure, sure. Just a thought.”

He dug a little harsher. “Your tomatoes, _Helen_.”

“Right, right.” She moved to tend to the misshapen little fruits.

Crowley buried the box, and cupped some of the rainwater trailing off the roof and splashed it on the freshly turned ground for good measure, since it was there. Meditatively, he pictured a couple cathartically unpleasant scenarios for the target, and stood to go in.

“Nice seeing you, neighbour!”

That was just too much; she was asking for divine retribution, at that point. He meandered towards the suburban stereotype and her disappointing vegetable garden. “You had much trouble with deer?”

“Comes with the territory!” Helen tweeted, annoyingly chipper for how drenched she was. “It’s a lovely area.”

“Quite.”

“I tried a few of those repellants, with the raw eggs, you know?”

“Any luck?” he prompted.

“No, no. I thought of putting motion sensors on my sprinklers, see if that startles them, but they’re so expensive.”

“You know what I heard works?”

“What’s that?”

She looked over her shoulder, and into his eyes, reflecting what little of her floodlight snaked around the side yard. “Human hair.”


	11. Pallomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by pendulum.

“Pendulum, I humbly implore you: is the sun set?”

The pendulum spun in circles. Maybe it was sick of calibration questions. Cas took a deep, grounding, calming breath, and let it out before requesting, “Am I  _ ever _ getting engaged?”

The amethyst point continued to swirl unhelpfully, just in the other direction. Castiel groaned loudly to keep from screaming.

“Having problems, love?”

He held his hand as still as possible, and still it swayed. “You gave me an obstinate object.”

His significant other approached from behind, and wrapped his arms around Castiel’s waist. “Should have cleansed it better.”

“I have never scrubbed a crystal so intensely. I’ve taken stones from gravel driveways less angry than this.”

“Now that’s a conundrum.” He peeked around his side, and snapped his fingers. In seconds, the point came to a stable resting position.

“How did you do that?” he interrogated.

Crowley smirked, disappearing behind his back again. “Witchcraft.”

Castiel rolled his eyes, then turned to bring them face-to-face- if it weren’t for Crowley taking one large step to the right, behind his back again. They chased each other in circles a few more rotations before Cas gave up, crossed his arms and threw his head back. Crowley leaned against the counter beside him. “Have you tried asking nicely?”

He glared, then demonstrated, extending his arm and waiting for the stone to settle. “Pendulum, if you would, is the earth flat, please?”

It swung madly, horizontal for a moment, which was completely incorrect, then diagonal. He groaned a forced, “Thank you.”

“Show him yes.”

It spun a wide circle.  Crowley snapped, and it stopped. “Show him no.” Back and forth, in no particular direction. Cas looked at him, desperately. Crowley smiled. “Thank you, darling.”

He even called his crystals pet names. “That configuration is... unstandard.”

“It used to be mine. Did you expect it to be  _ easy _ work with?”


	12. Cartomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by cards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally did that request for TheFierceBeast. Here's to a better day.

It was beautiful morning, Cas’s hair still wet as he stirred his tea. Crowley was in the living room, divining in one way or another, and too far into it to notice the swallows twittering outside. Thank God.

He tip-toed over the old floorboards to where his partner was seated, focusing. Castiel didn’t want to interrupt, so he leaned over his shoulder to get a look at what he was doing. Crowley pecked him on the cheek. “Good morning, love.”

“Morning.” he greeted, glancing over the three-card spread. “Are those... playing cards?”

“I didn’t feel like getting the altar cloth out.”

It’s odd, to think of divining with these. He’s using the Bicycle deck they picked up along with the groceries: he remembers throwing these cards at Crowley when he caught him cheating at Rummy. “Is there not already an intent attached to these?”

“That’s why I like them. They’re ebullient, and happy to help.”

He supposed the playing cards don’t mind being bridged, either. “Is reading them similar to tarot?”

“More than you may think. The standard playing deck evolved from early tarot.” He picked up the deck (minus three cards in a line on the coffee table) and ran his hands along the edges, popcorn-butter stains and creased corners. “Pip cards are the minor arcana. Hearts are cups, clubs wands, diamonds are pentacles, and spades swords.”

Cas took a sip from his mug, leaning over the back of the sofa. “What does this spread say?”

“That’s the bloody problem, isn’t it?” He set down the deck, and pointed out the far left card. “Past card is the five of clubs, or, wands. Competition, in search of riches. I was a cutthroat in law school, so that checks out. Present is nine of pentacles, safety and success. Great.”

“Then the Jack of Hearts.”

“Knight of Cups is usually an arrival, or proposition...” Crowley hovered his hand over the card, and shook his head. “Not today.”

Cas sat on the back of the couch, and sipped his tea. The silence sat warmly as he formulated, “Maybe it’s not the Knight of Cups.” Crowley cocked a brow at him, sitting back. “Maybe today, it’s just... the Jack of Hearts.” The lawyer slid the card to the edge, then took it in hand and held it close, slipping back into his dissociated scrying state. Cas glanced at the clock; he still had plenty of time- if Crowley being here was any indication. “I think I’ll take a walk before class.”

“Good day for it.”

“You should leave for work before I get back.”

“Right...” he mumbled. Castiel’s heavy presence snapped him out of it. “Right!” He rose, tucking the card in his inner jacket pocket and giving his partner a kiss as he passed.

“Have a good day.” Cas wished while Crowley straightened his tie in the mirror. Vain, God love him.

He paused. “...Would you call yourself an empath?”

After a brief consideration, “Yes.”

“What about a romantic?”

“Hopeless.”

Quietly, he prodded two fingers under his jacket, and took the card. Crowley looked on it fondly, and stuck it in the rim of the mirror.


	13. Chalcomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by the sound of gongs.

Castiel nearly dropped the assorted witchery cradled in his arms when Crowley shooed him frantically back inside.

“It’s the bloody neighbours! They’re having a cookout.” he hissed, peering out a curtain pulled aside.

“I thought you said Helen cancelled her New Year’s Eve party?”

“No, I just said I wasn’t going.”

Cas rolled his eyes, and flinched as he felt a jar shift. “We don’t have much time before midnight, Crowley.”

“Fine, fine!” Crowley closed the blinds, and sighed in preemptive regret for what he was about to do. “I’ll go over and distract them, you get the supplies out to the woods.”

“Thank you.” Cas said. “Besides, don’t you like the suburbs?”

“I like the suburbs,” he mentioned, stepping outside, “it’s suburbians I can’t stand.”

“Crowley!” one of the neighbours greeted as the homeowner approached, “didn’t think you were coming!”

“You haven’t since I moved in.” another observed- the owner of the house on the corner; Crowley recognized him. He quit inviting Crowley to poker a few months back. Of course, Crowley’s luck enchantments had worked a little too well and they suspected him of cheating, but they had no proof. He quite liked poker.

“Since  _ I _ moved in, but who’s counting?” the witch replied amiably.

“Pull up a chair.” Helen’s husband- a man with an unreally common name like Michael or John- offered, motioning to a bare spot on the deck.

He slid into the empty space, completing the circle of stupidity. 

“How’ve you been?” the poker host spoke up.

“Never better.” he admitted honestly.

“Good, good.” one of four identical men praised, and the conversation returned to taxes. Crowley snaked a hand behind the back of his chair, and waved Castiel on.

“What do you think, Crowley?” the husband of the most obnoxious soccer mom in Pennsylvania addressed. “Do you think marriage is just for the taxes?”

“Marriage is for the women.” John Winchester spoke up, resident drunk- and earning his title.

“You wouldn’t say that if your wife was alive.” Crowley redirected. The question was to him, after all.

The men went quiet. John narrowed his eyes, took the final pull of his beer, and went silently into the house. A tide of female laughter poured through the open door. Crowley watched him go, smiling pleasantly, before responding, “No one really gets married for taxes. It’s sex or commitment, and you don’t really need to get hitched for either of those.”

He knew at least one person in that circle had been abstinent until marriage.

“Would you consider settling down?” Michael- that had to be his name; John was the drunkard- queried. It felt like a leading question.

“You kidding!?” a wholly uninteresting husband interjected. “He hasn’t had the same girl twice!”

“I so love when people speak for me...” Modestly, the subject of conversation turned his gaze elsewhere, spying the last of Cas’s trenchcoat before he slinked inside for what he couldn’t carry the first trip.

“Come on, buddy! You know, I once saw two women at this guy’s house in the same day!” He smacked a hand to the lawyer’s shoulder, who glared at the offending appendage until it was removed. He wished the man had hair. 

“Same time, actually.” Nevermind one was a colleague dropping off some paperwork, and the other an interior decorator; the deck went up into whoops- which perfectly covered the sound of glassware clinking in Cas’s arms. 

“See!?” the boring one edged in. Crowley couldn’t help but feel he was being lived through vicariously.

“You never answered the question.” Michael pointed out, motioning gently with his champagne flute. “You ever think of going long term?”

Michael wasn’t that grating, truth be told, he just married a hag. Crowley answered, “Already am.”

The uninteresting one to Crowley’s left groaned his disappointment as John slunk quietly back to his seat with a new bottle in hand. “What’d I miss?”

“Crowley’s got a girl!”

“Well, duh.” John slurred. “Am I the only one seeing the Continental in the driveway?”

“I thought you sold the Bentley!” Poker Prat imparted.

The very idea was an offense. “I would  _ never! _ ”

“Well then,” Michael soothed, and his voice alone brought all others to silence and attention, “tell us about her.”

Wrong pronoun, but he’d keep that in his pocket for now. “Name’s Castiel.” They nodded with forced approval, like they would for any name a family member didn’t share. Michael blinked affably. “Working on a doctorate in sociology. Bloody intelligent. Gorgeous.”

“She’d have to be to snag you!” the bore (and boor) proclaimed.

Crowley gave him a withering look. “What are you, hitting on me? We’re not friends.”

“You thinking of a ring?” Michael diffused with a sly sip.

Confronted with the idea, Crowley avoided, noticing Cas traversing their backyard with empty hands. “Speak of the devil. Cas, darling! Care to join?” Befuddled, he did. “Michael, John, whoever you are, this is Castiel.”

He took the host’s outstretched hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

“A pleasure to have you.”

John scoffed, but Michael shot him a look with immutable authority. Castiel pondered if he was military. “You must be the one we’ve heard so much about.”

Cas quirked a brow. “Is that so?” he questioned. Crowley tugged him at the waist until he was as close as the arm of the deck chair would allow. “Good things, I hope.”

Crowley chuckled as if it were a joke, and the other men reluctantly joined in. He yanked Castiel into his lap while he was distracted. Gasps and mumbles went up behind them, from the eavesdropping wives. Crowley rubbed his back with his free hand, flicking the women off. Cas pulled, but his partner held fast to his arm. They smiled at each other facetiously, then the rest of the deck. John chugged, and muttered about cleaning the grille before vacating the deck.

One down, three to go.

The bore looked desperately to Michael, like he couldn’t make a decision on his own, and shook Cas’s hand violently. “Nice to meet you, Cas! Known Crowley for years, I have!”

“Who are you, again?”

Cas elbowed him for that.

“I need more champagne!” the poker host blurted. “Anybody else?”

Michael angled his empty flute to the man, who took it graciously inside. Two down...

That left Michael with his boring name, and the unnamed bore. He seemed to understand he was out of his league. “John, you need any help with-”

“NO!”

The host turned to the other man. “He’s stubborn. Go.” He was all too happy to remove himself.

And then there was one.

“We didn’t receive your RSVP. Do you have other engagements?” Michael asked, folding his hands.

Castiel managed to drag himself away while his significant other was busy with his staring contest. “In fact, we do.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. That.”

The prat stumbled outside, as if he was shoved (and indeed, a few muffled orders of “Go! Go!” followed him out). He slipped one glass to the host, and sat quietly. 

Michael declared, “Thanks for stopping by.”

“Be seeing you.” Crowley promised before he was dragged away.

Michael sipped his drink. “Happy New Year.” If he saw them turn into the woods instead of the house, he didn’t bring it up.


	14. Cometomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by comet tails.

“I am going to murder you.”

Castiel glanced to his partner in the passenger seat. “You certainly look the part.”

Scrunched down in the seat, elbow on the the window sill and two fingers to his temple, Crowley managed to keep his eyes open long enough to glare death. “I’m serious. Whenever we get wherever you’re insistent on going at two in the friggin’ morning, I’m strangling you.”

“Wait until we get back. Your insurance doesn’t apply if you’re driving my car. At current, you’re liable to fall asleep at the wheel.”

Crowley did not respond, having already fallen asleep.

When they arrived, Castiel parked, engaged the parking brake, opened his door, and slammed it shut. Crowley hit his knee on the glovebox when he startled awake. “Bollocks!”

“We’ve arrived.”

Crowley squinted, and gazed out the window instead. “Fairmount Park? I sincerely hope you don’t expect me to go night hiking again. Nearly twisted my ankle.”

“The furthest from the vehicle I need you is the hood.” he assured, exiting. Crowley followed suit- although he made a great show of it being against his will. They leaned against the hood, but it was at that uncomfortable, back-of-the-thigh height, and they both ended up sitting on top of it. Lincoln Continentals have plenty of hoodspace.

“Why am I here?” the lawyer grumbled.

“Moral support.”

Crowley glanced his partner’s direction, and found him stargazing. “Pardon, was that  _ sarcasm? _ ”

Castiel smiled. “You’re rubbing off on me.”

He got some pride out of that.

“Look.” Cas spoke up, pointing above the treeline. 

Crowley wanted to think it was a plane, because he wanted to stay angry, but the white streak in the sky was, in fact, a meteor. “You woke me up for a meteor shower?”

“I woke you up because I love you and wanted to share the experience.”

There was a stretch of silence. “Don’t get all spiritual on me. I’m too bloody tired.” he said, but watched a meteoroid fall, and thought it looked like someone cut the atmosphere. “Aren’t you supposed to wish on these?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m only saying, it’s less energy than a spell.”

Cas took a long breath, head craned back to get the full view of the night sky. “I’m content.”

Reluctantly, Crowley uncrossed his arms, and put a hand on Castiel’s shoulder, though he muttered, “You’re cornier than Iowa.”


	15. Cledonomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by overheard words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's your smooches, Button.

Castiel eased the door open, trying to be quiet. The floor didn’t squeak, of course- not the seventeenth- but he tiptoed anyway to avoid interrupting Crowley’s call.

“I wouldn’t worry about it.” he counseled, smiling as Cas approached. 

Castiel clasped his hands behind his back to avoid smudging the glass top desk as he leaned over it to peck his partner chastely on the cheek. Crowley, on the other hand, took him by the back of the neck and planted a few up his jaw. Cas had to smack a hand to the desk or risk falling forward. Crowley worked his way around to his ear- and he could feel him grinning, and just about hear what the client was saying on the phone- and nipped the lobe. Cas clenched his jaw to keep from chuckling at the absurdity.

Crowley released before pulling back and said, “That’s what you hire me for.”

Cas stifled a laugh as he retreated to inspect the office. He didn’t get out here very often- hates city driving, and half the time Crowley’s taking calls over his lunch anyway- but the paralegals are kind to him. All except Crowley secretary, that is, who seems to dislike him on principle. She probably thought she was the only one he calls “darling”. It doesn’t bother Castiel; Crowley is waging long-form campaign to make him jealous, and it simply isn’t in him. 

Besides, being a witch himself, Crowley knows better than to cheat on one.

His work office is almost as uncomfortably immaculate as his bedroom- minus the resources he was currently working with. There’s a line of legal texts on the shelves behind him, a double stack of papers on the corner of his desk, and a telephone on the other, just below a lamp. It looked like the interior decorator had a long day, and didn’t finish drawing up the plans before going home. Cas lifted the geode paperweight, and he could just tell Crowley had been directing any anger accrued during work hours into it. He set it down gently; the poor crystal had enough to deal with.

“My girl’s already on it.” Crowley replied to the inaudible conversation, taking a pen from the cup and blank sheet from the drawer. Castiel glanced in the drawer as it was left open: general office supplies, nothing witchy (unless that box of staples was filled with herbs). Crowley pulled it out all the way, and pointed down, below the drawer itself. Cas crouched, checked the underside. It was scrawled completely in sigils. “I should have that Thursda- or Wednesday.” He scribbled away. “I can make Wednesday work.”

Castiel nudged the drawer shut, and felt the face. Unscratched. He pointed at the door, and Crowley wrinkled his nose slightly, pushing out the chair across from him slightly with his foot. They’d known each other long enough, words were an optional aspect of communication.

He took the seat, and looked up at Crowley-  _ up _ . Crowley is shorter than him. Crowley gets mad when the cat sits on a high shelf; this shouldn’t surprise him.

He smiles knowingly as he double-speaks, “Shouldn’t be much longer.”

Cas nodded, looked out the window, and admired the lines of the city. He was jarred back to reality by the pen, double-tapping the glass top. There was a paper next to it, with an assortment of similar sigils drawn on. One was circled. He tilted the paper forty-five degrees, and pushed it back. The lawyer seemed to approve. “Should have everything I need, but I’ll let you know if I don’t.”

He heard to mottled, electronic reply, and clenched down a laugh as Crowley let his eyes roll back in his skull. “Of course.” He wrote a few words next to the sigil in its new orientation, and slid it back. 

_ I do not insult my client _

Cas smacked his hands over his mouth, and an awful sniffly noise came out his nose. He held out his hand, and Crowley handed him the pen.

_ I do not insult my client when they can hear. _

Crowley winked. “That should do it.” A few more words were exchanged, and the conversation was ended. Crowley smacked the phone on the receiver. “She’s insufferable.”

“I could tell.”

He sat up. “What are you doing here?”

“I have an interview for my thesis at two. Do you want lunch?”

“Get me out of here.”

They were stood, Crowley had one arm in his coat when his secretary flung the door open- bit presumptuous for a law firm, he thought. “Mr. Crowley? Mr. Roman’s on the phone.”

He hissed on the mucus that collects in one’s throat during winter, then looked longingly at Cas.

“I can pick up McAllister’s.” he offered.

He huffed, shedding the coat. “Put him on line one, love.”

Her manicured eyebrows shot up as he said it, and she smiled facetiously at Castiel as she said, “As you wish.”

When the door clicked shut, he disclosed, “I think she’s attracted to you.”

“She’s got a five-year-old.”

That was all it took for Crowley not to be attracted to her. Were that not the desired outcome, he might wonder about that. “Ah.”

“Besides,” he said, writing down his order, “there are more fun ways to bother you than flirting with my coworkers.”

A great many things, truth be told. “Such as?”

Crowley handed his significant other the slip of paper, and smiled. “Telling them about our sex life.”


	16. Aeromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by atmospheric conditions.

“It’s freezing.”

“It’s slightly above freezing.” Castiel corrected.

“What are you, the weatherman? Here’s the five-day forecast: cold, cold, cold, bloody cold, colder.”

“With a chance of flurries.”

Crowley glared, only to find his significant other smiling amicably. “Flurries, my arse. We’re getting snowed in.”

“Wherever did you hear that?”

“The cards don’t lie.”

“Though they are often incorrect.”

Oh, Crowley didn’t like that. Cas atoned by lifting the last box of firewood into the trunk and returning their shopping cart to the corral. He stopped just between the rails, and shoved, letting the cart roll down until it hit a satisfying  _ clink _ against the far fence. He admired the ice that jostled from the rail and cracked apart against the pavement. He exhaled condensed breath, and felt the chill tingle all along his skin.

The wind kicked up, and he decided to let it take him. So, Cas just... wandered the parking lot. He wondered where birds went in the winter: he could see nests, but no birds. Maybe they were tucked down inside, desperate to stay warm. The wind seized a smattering of leaves that hadn’t been collected in the fall, should have been buried under snow by now, breaking down to feed the plants that had grown them, but winter was late this year. It swept them up, and he watched them dance circles in the moonlight. The sky was swathed in grey.

“Are you coming?” Crowley bemoaned from a cracked window, having pulled up beside him.

Castiel cocked his head. “Do you ever think of how early meteorology would have been considered divination?”

“No. Get in the car.”

The clouds were moving quickly, brushing the moon as he observed. “Someone must have looked up and said, the clouds are too sharp, a tornado’s coming. Others would have called them mad- a witch, in certain time periods- you can’t predict weather from the clouds...”

Crowley put the Bentley in park, and quietly got out.

Castiel closed his eyes against the ice crystals that stung his cheeks as the wind blew back, but he sensed Crowley beside him. Body heat, maybe. “Do you ever wonder if divination is just science that hasn’t been discovered yet?”

He felt his significant other’s eyes on him, and met them. “...It’s too cold for your metaphysical bollocks.”

Cas leaned in, smiled, and murmured, “It’s going to hail.”


	17. Dendromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by trees.

They say spring is the time for yard work, but people who say that have obviously never spoken to a tree. If that’s not your thing, arborologists say it too: trees adapt best when the changes are made in winter, while they’re hibernating through the cold like you wish you could.

Ivy is an evergreen, a tenacious plant whose leaves can be infused to a spell to make it just never go away. It also strangles the hell out of everything else around it.

It was twenty-four degrees, and Castiel was dangling from an ivy vine in the backyard, cursing it for the same qualities he admired it for. He scratched his feet against the bark of the very elm he was trying to free. Well, they didn’t call it “slippery” for nothing; he dropped to the snow-dusted ground, and the vine stayed where it was. Cas laid there a few moments, freezing, aching, until he heard what he assumed could only be the voice of God.

“Would you like some help with that?”

“Yes, Lord.” he agreed. The face above him was kind, handsome, light spilling out around the head in a halo- and then God was Michael Milligan, and Michael was helping Castiel up. 

“Ivy can be difficult,” he advised, holding up a pair of branch clippers, “I thought you may need this.”

“You’re an angel.”

He smiled, beautifully. “Could I give you a hand with that?”

Castiel dipped his head slightly as he said, “I’m not going to turn it down.”

So, they clipped ivy. It was boggling to Castiel that his next-door neighbour was so... well, affable. Especially after the New Year’s incident. And Crowley’s tradition of stabbing each perfect apple on their perfect apple tree just before ripe. And that one time he found a dead bird and (after rejoicing) left it in the Milligan’s mailbox. They  _ had _ to know that was him. Who  _ else _ would it be?

“Is everything alright?” Perfect Michael Milligan asked perfectly.

Cas breathed a long sigh, and saw that despite the wind swirling snow behind him, Michael’s hair was unmoved. “Why are you so nice?”

He smiled, as if this was a question he’d hoped to be asked. “I’m a Christian.”

“Me too.” Sort of.

His perfect eyebrows rose. “Really? I hadn’t expected that, considering your...” Lifestyle? Loose morals? Pagan tendencies? “Partner.”

Dear Christ; he admitted it. “He’s...” Cas started, before realizing there weren’t words for whatever Crowley was. “I do love him.”

“That’s all that’s important.” Michael said, and cut an ivy stalk.

This couldn’t be... Castiel was living next to the rare kind of Christian whose actions would actually align with  _ What Would Jesus Do? _ He thought they were mythological: like modern-day miracles, and spirit keeping.

Michael rested the shears on the toe of his shoe as a thought occurred to him. “If it’s not too personal, what attracted you to him?”

They bumped into each other in the woods in the middle of the night, and considering what they dropped, neither of them had any hope of saying they were there for reasons other than weird pagan rituals. “He knows what he wants,” Castiel lied by omission, “he’s ambitious.”

Michael nodded kindly. “That’s a good trait for a man.” He sounds distinctly like he’s using the word “man” as shorthand for “mankind”. He looked down, and back up, considerate and chancing. “Would you like to join us for church?”

There are two types of churches: what the Bible says a congregation should be, and what they realistically are. Michael Milligan, however, is what the Good Book says a man should be, and Cas hopes- wants to believe- his place of worship is the same way.

“Just me?”

“If you can convince Crowley, we’d be glad to have him,” he took up the clippers, “but I somehow doubt even you have that power.

“Crowley can choke on Communion for all I care.” Dragged into a House of God, he would fake it, too. Best to leave him out. “I’d love to.”


	18. Roadomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by constellations.

“Hey, Crowley-”

“No.”

Cas lowered the book he was reading. “Pardon?”

“I said no. No to everything!”

He twisted around from his spot on the sofa. “You haven’t a clue what I was going to ask.”

“Please save all questions until after I’m done.”

At that point, he was interested. Castiel slipped the mark in his book and set it on the table, watching as Crowley scribbled furiously. When he was done he smacked the pen down, folded the paper into thirds, and stuffed it in an envelope. Huh. Maybe a work-letter.

Until he dusted the envelope with cinnamon, tapped the dry adhesive to his tongue, and sealed it shut. He struck a match (and after admiring for the amount of time he usually did, being of fire) and lit the envelope, dropping it and the the waved-out match into one of their thrift-shop kitchen pots. This is why the fire alarm in the kitchen doesn’t have a battery. It smelled nice, anyway.

Crowley supervised the flame, then took a jar from the kitchen cabinet (the safe one beside the stove), unscrewed the cap, and took a l _ iteral gulp _ of what was either thyme or rosemary- something that wouldn’t hurt him, being only a kitchen spice, but it definitely wasn’t meant for straight quantities like that. He let the spice sit on his tongue for a while before rinsing it out in the sink.

Castiel was a green witch; he believed in nature, did spells from leaves and stones, candles, and a whole lot of salt. Crowley craft was deviated from a path of traditional Scottish witchcraft that was traceable in his family back to the 1600s. Cas literally spoke to trees, and the eccentricity of his craft had nothing on Crowley’s. Most of Crowley’s protection bottles had urine in them.

He took the now burned-out pot, set it in the sink, and ran the water cold. “What were you saying?” he choked on a water-down mouthful of thyme.

“What in God’s name are you doing?”

He shut off the water, swallowed thickly, and made his way into the living room. “Mercury’s in retrograde.”

Call Cas a treehugger all you like; he’s living with a man who takes horoscopes seriously.


	19. Cryptomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by omens.

There’s a wooden file box in the closet, which they loving call, “The Chest of Shame”. It’s pretty plain, bar the sigil on the lid, and its only purpose is to suck the ever-living energy out of anything put inside of it. It’s good for sachets that have served their purpose, jar spells that need to stop- Crowley puts his anger stones in there to cool off. Castiel opened it to store a candleholder he’d picked up thrift shopping and was getting a weird vibe from, and found four different tarot decks inside.

That’s how he knew something was wrong.

He’d taken the rosemary out of the spice cabinet and put it in with the poisonous herbs, physically removed Grace from where she often curled up on their bed instead of shooing her away- Crowley even offered to take Cas’s mug in when he was done with it (that should have given it away) and he caught him reading the leaves. Scrubbed it for a good ten minutes.

Castiel stared out the upstairs window, watching Crowley pluck ivy leaves at one in the morning. He tossed a few over his shoulder, and came inside. Cas pretended to be asleep, and the next day, found the ivy torn to bits in the trashcan.

They had an agreement- one does not cast spells on the other. You do it  _ with _ them.

It just-so-happens to be a full moon.

They were out in Fairmount Park, a little after midnight, didn’t even need the salt; they just drew a circle in the snow. Castiel hadn’t even brought his box; he was here to feel the pulse of the world around him. He could do all his workings inside- where it’s  _ warm _ . He’d a hedge witch; he doesn’t have a deathwish.

“Help me with this one?” Castiel requested, smiling over his shoulder. 

Crowley capped his candle, and bent his arms back to take Cas by the hand, one, then the other. He took a couple deep breaths, following the pace of his partner’s. “What’s the intent?”

“You tell me what’s going on.”

He tried to pull away, but the position they were in, arms bent back behind him, there wasn’t much of anywhere he could go. Crowley tried to stand up, but it wouldn’t work as long as Cas just doubled over on himself. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere!”

“The trees know.”

Crowley groaned in defeat, and let his head rest on Cas’s skull. “The Mercury retrograde really isn’t the best time to talk about this.”

“Would you maintain that stance if I postponed the conversation until it’s over?”

Soon-to-be sociologist, uses he cell phone for little other than calls, has never forgotten an appointment. Crowley sighed, and opened his hands. Cas let him go.

He rose, and meandered between the trees. The stars shone through the branches above. Couldn’t get any input from the trees, essentially unreachable in hibernation- but, Crowley didn’t need to know that.

“...I’m not ready to get married.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

Crowley came around a tree trunk, and it dusted him in shedding snow. He glared at it, and felt he was outnumbered. “I mean... not ever.”

Cas blinked across the clearing. “Get over here. It’s freezing.”

That time, it truly was.

The other listened. Sat in the impression he’d left in the snow. He looked rather forlorn. Cas hated seeing him like that. “I never mentioned because I never thought it would get this far. I’ve never been this close.”

To marriage. To anyone. He’d sort of assumed- well, they were together the day gay marriage was nationally legalized, they lit every candle in the house and danced until they burned out. Cas took his hands- cold. Everything was. “All I want is to know you’re committed to me.”

“We share a bed, a bathroom, and a bank account. Doesn’t get much closer, angel.”

“Then I’m happy here.”

Crowley smiled down at their clasped hands. “Though, I’d be happier somewhere with central heating.”

“Agreed.”


	20. Alveromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by sounds.

Picts means “painted ones.” They were a Scottish tribe around the first century, known to cover themselves in body art, particularly before battle. Crowley has a bit of it in his craft.

Castiel’s been drawing sigils on himself for as long as he’s been bored in chemistry classes, but it’s nothing like having your body covered in runes older than this country. Rarely did Crowley do anything so folklorish, but he’d agreed to allow Castiel in on a small ritual he had prepared for the end of the retrograde which involved body painting. It would be a lot easier, if Cas weren’t so ticklish.

“Hold still.”

Normally, rituals were performed in one of two places: the woods out back, or Fairmount Park. If it was a particularly small one, either by the stove or fireplace, to represent the hearth of the home. Today, though, was the first time in a week you could step outside shirtless and live to tell about it- so long as you didn’t go very far. So, the back porch it was.

“Are you sure Helen-”

“She has zumba in the morning. Believe me, she’s in bed.”

There was a sharp crash then, in a side yard which definitely bordered theirs. They listened, and heard only bushes rustling. Crowley shrugged. “Sounds like Mills’s cat.”

The struggle became louder, and then someone was huffing. Put-out, Crowley set down his paints and went to investigate.

Helen’s damn floodlights lit up her back and front yards like the gates of heaven, but there was a gap around the side where neither illuminated, but blinded you from the peripherals. It was very hard to see there, indeed. But, it was hard to miss the cursing. He leaned against his own house, and waited for the Milligans’ son to free himself from the hedge.

“Fine night for a walk.” Crowley piped up, and Adam jumped so hard he fell back into the bush.

He peeked over the top of the plant. “Uh... Hi, Mr. Crowley.”

“Adam.” he acknowledged.

The teenager rounded the azalea hedge, spitting a leaf out of his mouth. “So, uh, what are you doing out this late?”

He paused, for effect. “You first.”

“Oh, you know, just, um... Seeing some friends.”

“Are they vampires, who only appear well into the night and can’t use the front door?”

Couldn’t see his face very well in the dark, but Adam knew he was caught.

“Well, well, whatever am I going to tell Helen? Either her kid’s in a cult, or he took  _ Twilight _ way too seriously. Which is worse?”

“Crowley, come on, I’m freezing.” Castiel cut in

They both turned to look, and found Cas standing just on the border of the light, naked from the waist up. To screw with the boy, Crowley shouted, “Just a moment, kitten!” He could see Adam eying the upstairs window to his parents’ room. “Can’t go back the way you came, I’m afraid... Oh, hell, have a good time.”

“What, you mean it!? Thank you so much, Mr. Crowley!”

“Oh, don’t thank me. You’re still shoveling snow as a winter job, aren’t you?”

He sighed, very quietly. “Fine.”

“Thatta boy. Now don’t keep the vampires waiting.”

“Right. Thanks.” he said again, because he’s a brown-noser like that, and ran for the front.

Crowley returned to his significant other, but Adam found he’d dropped his wallet somewhere in the azaleas- just in time to see the stark black designs painted on Castiel’s back before they disappeared into the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where we break 10K, officially making Grey the longest thing I have ever written! {Confetti, balloons, mandatory party hats}


	21. Gyromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by dizziness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alucard2008: this is for you, yo.

Castiel sneezed: a great, roaring noise.

“Absolutely not!” Crowley shouted, dodging out the sliding glass door. 

“It’s allergies, Crowley.” his partner assured, positioning himself on this side of the glass.

“You’re not getting me sick!”

“This happens every January. I’m fine.”

“I can’t miss work, do you hear me!?”

From the other side of the door, he responded, “Barely.” 

“You are not getting me sick!”

Castiel tried to open it, but Crowley held fast. “You’re more likely to catch something out there. It’s twenty degrees.”

“Nature respects me!”

Castiel, rather attuned with the forces of nature himself, thought that a ridiculous thing to say. Holding eye contact, he stretched his pinkie from the handle, and flicked the lock on. Crowley looked horrified. Cas only cocked a brow. Obstinate to the last, Crowley crossed his arms, and turned around. 

Cas relished in being able to watch  _ American Idol _ without Crowley’s obnoxious commentary. He gave it a half hour before calling out, “The front door’s unlocked, if you weren’t aware.”

Crowley held out five minutes more before rushing inside and curling up shivering next to his significant other. He still mumbled obnoxious complaints about the contestants- between sneezes. Cas didn’t sneeze the rest of the night.

The next morning, however, he had the kind of headache he hadn’t had since his freshman year of college, and knew he was coming down with it. They spent ten minutes arguing over who gave it to whom before Crowley went off to work. 

Crowley took a couple days off to take care of Cas and his flu. It’s not like he was going to use them otherwise; Crowley hadn’t been sick in years.


	22. Arithmancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by numbers.

“This is hell.”

“This is a DMV.”

“Like I said,” Crowley reiterated, clutching his number, “hell.”

Castiel looked up at the blinding fluorescent.  _ Are you there, God? Sometimes I wonder... _ “What’s our number?”

“One-o’-eight.”

He glanced at the current customer: eighty-two. Castiel reopened his book.

“How can you read? I’m suffocating.”

Cas stuck his thumb between the pages, and closed the book. “I’m sure you can step outside-”

“Not the air, the  _ atmosphere! _ ” He leaned in, and lowered his voice. “Funeral homes aren’t this gloomy.”

Castiel supposed he was right. “I don’t pay much attention.”

“You’ve got to teach me that.”

Cas looked over, and cocked his head. “I believe it’s called a spiritual awakening.”

“Right, your metaphysical bollocks.” he grumbled, drumming his fingers on the arm of the rickety chair.

“You are a literal witch.”

He shushed frantically, and Cas countered, “Everyone here is half-dead.”

He rolled his eyes back in his head.

“Where’s your howlite?”

The lawyer sighed. “At home, soaking in the box of shame.”

“What possessed you to enter a government facility without howlite?”

He had to clear his throat before mocking, “ _ Why don’t we renew the tags while we’re here? It’s best to get it over with. _ ” He coughed. “Best to come on a weekday, when everyone’s looking to shove you along.”

Castiel focused instead on the ticker television. Eighty-four. “Can’t you scry, or something?”

“How do you think I’ve been occupying myself the past twenty minutes?”

“Has it been that long?” Checking the clock in the corner of the television, like a sick reminder, it had. “Huh.”

“Prat.” he mumbled jealously. Castiel went back to his book.

“Eighty-five?” the clerk called. “Eighty-five? Number eighty-five?”

Every impatient patron looked around for whatever moron was holding them up. That was the only movement.

“Number eighty-five?”

He gritted his teeth.

“...Eighty-five?”

“That’s it.” he huffed, smacking his partner’s book shut. He glared at his lost page. Crowley held his hand open, and Cas took it.

“What is this for?” he asked, turning their linked hands.

“Energy link. Now help me clear the air in here.”

He took a breath, closed his eyes- didn’t wait for confirmation; he’d never say no- and Cas cleansed a bit of the immediate space just with his smile before joining in.


	23. Favomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by cast beans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Super Bowl Sunday. Sports!

Roars went up around them, and Cas joined them with a shout that sounded distinctly distressed. He sat back, and observed the other guests. Michael and a man from the cul-de-sac discussed numbers. Adam and his school friends spoke of something completely different. Helen lamented the stain of bean dip on her blouse. Crowley glared intensely at the screen.

Hushed, Castiel asked his partner, “Do you know anything about football”

Offhanded, he replied, “Growing up in Scotland, it’s impossible to avoid. Different football, though.”

Simultaneously, the Milligans and their super bowl-saavy attendees hooted cheers. “Look at that touchdown!”

“Such a touchdown!” Castiel attempted to empathize. 

Crowley stifled a laugh, and Cas elbowed him- somehow, with how close they were crushed against each other to share a recliner. In retaliation, Crowley wriggled himself out of the cushions and to his feet. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Helen pointed one direction. “Second door on your left!”

He smiled, and slipped out. Unseen to the others, he lifted a palette of face paints from the kitchen counter on the way.

A few minutes passed, and with no sign of him, Castiel went off to find out what he was planting in the Milligans’ home: a hex bag, or the hex itself.

Crowley was, surprisingly, actually in the bathroom. Under the door, Cas could tell the lights were off. “Crowley.”

The door swung open, and he was dragged inside before it clicked shut again.

Most witchcraft looks like hippie spirituality and cooking. What Crowley was doing in the Milligans’ bathroom would immediately be seen as Satanic.

He’d lit the decorative candles, dusty and untouched by flame before this Super Bowl Sunday, and drawn a sigil on the mirror in team colours face paint. “I hope you’re going to wash that off.”

“Yes, hush.” He took a piece of gauze, pilfered from their medicine cabinet and painted in a crude Panthers logo- probably with the end of that toothbrush laying out, and sipped it in the fire with a pair of tweezers. He watched it catch with a casual awe- a fire spirit, Crowley (how he ended up with a water God only knows)- before dropping it in the sink basin. 

“What are you doing?”

“Cursing their team.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate them.” Crowley watched the piece of gauze shrivel up and burn, then snuffed it under the tap water. “Sooner someone loses, sooner we can go.”

“I don’t think that’s how football works.” Castiel noted, swiping his fingers under the stream and pinching a caramel apple candle’s wick between them.

Crowley shut off the tap, licked his fingers, and did the same for the other one. “I can’t find it in me to care.”

“What are you two doing in there?” the patron Milligan prompted with a backhanded rap of his knuckles.

Candles still set out, ash in the sink, and symbol on the mirror, Crowley responded, “Satanic rites.”

Castiel is very good at a few things: sachets, essays, and covering for Crowley. He grabbed him by the collar as he hopped on the counter, and kissed him violently. When the door came open, the sink and mirror were obstructed by Castiel, Crowley’s hand on his thigh. Michael raised an eyebrow, but didn’t seem all that surprised.

They stared at each other for a while, Michael taking turns between the two of them. Crowley broke the silence with, “Did I miss Beyoncé?”


	24. Pyromancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by fire.

Castiel involves the four elements (or “watchtowers” as Wiccans call them) heavily in his craft. After all, trees are just messengers of the earth, and if you’ve ever followed the wind, you know it’s sentient just from the little tricks it plays. Everyone has an element they relate to—whether they’ve identified it or not—and a perceptive witch can usually guess. For instance, Michael Milligan is the definition of earthy steadfastness. 

Castiel is a water, with his borderless mercy and forgiveness, who finds comfort in the rain and a sort of solidarity at the seashore. Pennsylvania’s landlocked, Lake Erie notwithstanding, but it’s not too bad a drive to the Atlantic Ocean. Castiel likes to sink his toes in the sand and let the waves lap against his ankles. He looks out on water, far as the eye can see and farther, and feels a very small part of a very large power.

It’s different for Crowley.

If you couldn’t tell from his fondness of burning things, he’s a fire, and that’s the difference. With all the other elements, there is a massive well of that power not far off—too far to the ocean, for those inland, but there are lakes and rivers and waterfalls to fill the void. Airs have high places and open plains, earths have the very ground beneath their feet: but what do fires have? Volcanoes and the molten centre of the earth? How are they supposed to visit that? Forest fires, not quite; that would be like a water finding comfort in a tsunami. Even bonfires are manmade.

It wasn’t cold enough for a fire, but winter was drawing to a close—if Punxsutawney Phil was to be trusted—and they had logs left. Castiel watched  _ American Idol _ , and Crowley didn’t complain, because he was too engrossed with that little slice of his soul under their own mantle.


	25. Auramancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by aura.

Charlie is a bit of a techno-witch, spells written in binary and her Book of Shadows split between Tumblr posts. Cas met her on campus, and she’s a programmer now, all flannel and electricity and Hellenic goddesses.

This is why it came as a surprise to Castiel that her girlfriend is a naturalist Wiccan. She doesn’t wear makeup, all her food is organic, and she has a silver faerie pendant on a choker just above her pentacle.

They’re an odd pairing— almost as odd as Cas and Crowley, actually— and they’re getting married today.

“Why’d it have to be in a  _ church? _ ” Crowley groaned as they looked on the imposing building. “Isn’t that blasphemous, if neither of you are Christians?”

“Christianity is open to anyone.” he informed. “Michael’s church has a drug dealer ushering.” He glared incredulously, but Castiel took him by the arm and played usher himself. “I hear someone in the choir was convicted of manslaughter.”

“What kind of bloody church are you going to!?”

“A good one.” Crowley didn’t have much to say about that. Cas pointed out, “You haven’t combusted yet.”

Hunched over on himself like the goth cousin at a family reunion, Crowley muttered, “There’s still time.”

Redhead in a white dress barrelled down the hall towards them, heels in her hand. “Castiel!”

The man smiled, head high, but arms wide. Bracing himself for impact. “Charlie.” 

As expected, she rammed right into him, and went to bouncing about him. “I’m getting married!”

With all the calm amusement of listening to a child’s stories, Castiel responded, “I know. You look lovely.”

“Not as good as Gilda, I bet.”

“Crazy talk.” Crowley cut in, for reasons he could not name. Cas looked as surprised as he was with himself.

Only then did she notice her friend’s plus-one, appraising him for the first time before whispering to Cas, “Oh my God, he could play a CEO on TV.”

Outright harassing his partner’s friend on her wedding day seemed ill-advisable, so Crowley settled for forward flirting. “Only if I get you as the charming love interest, darling.”

Castiel side-eyed him, but there was a smile in there. Charlie laughed, “Talk like that around my fianceé, and she will actually fight you.” Then, she leaned in, and charged conspiratorially, “Seriously though, that would make for one memorable reception.” She genuinely winked, and Crowley thought Cas could have worse friends. 

Cas, alternatively, looked terrified by what a hacker and hexer could get up to at a wedding. “Charlie, didn’t you want me to meet your niece?”

“Yes!” she bubbled. “She’s gonna love you!”

Mercifully, he turned to Crowley before the bride could drag him off. “You can wait on the balcony, if you’d like.”

“Bless you.” he mumbled, and vacated immediately, because the damn holy ground was rubbing off on him.

High sixties, outside, vacant. A breeze blew through the covered porch, tickling the tablecloths, and were Crowley a bit more like Castiel, he’d think the Northern Watchtower were teasing him. It hadn’t snowed again, anyway. February was an awful time for a wedding, above the thirty-eighth parallel.

A girlish giggle crept along the breeze, and Crowley found he wasn’t alone on the balcony. A woman in a long white dress, back to him, so he could see the dip of it— and an almost cartoonish star tattooed at the base of her spine. She had her hands out, palms up, soaking in sunlight, and giggling. He’d bet if the neckline were a little wider, she’d have butterfly wings on her shoulder blades.

“Shouldn't you be off micromanaging, or getting cold feet?”

Gilda turned, curly hair flying over her shoulder. No makeup, still, but with skin like that, did she really need it? “You must be Crowley.”

“I see my reputation as an arsehole precedes me.”

Still smiling, she glided over. Flats, maybe so she’ll look shorter than Charlie. Maybe to be closer to the earth, like a true treehugger. “It’s your aura.”

Yep. Treehugger.

“You don’t believe me.”

“I don’t believe most things.” Especially not from women who believe in faeries.

“Cas is blue.”

“That’s the consensus.”

“But there’s this brilliant yellow, right around his head. Like a halo.”

Unbidden and accidentally, Crowley thought back to the first time he met Castiel, at Fairmount, repurposed (bastardized) jewellry box under his arm and feather he found clutched in his hand, and the moon had sat just so it lit him like a spotlight. The first time they’d kissed on the walk from a parking garage to the diner Cas likes so much, because he was perfect, and he couldn’t wait any longer, and the setting sun flashed against a skyscraper as they jogged a crosswalk, just as Cas smiled. Waking up next to him, every day, and if he’s not blocking the sun from Crowley’s eyes by just how close he’s lying, he’s at the window, with the morning light streaming around him, like a halo, but damn if he’s not glowing his own.

“Do you want to know what colour you are?”

It’s probably just because he’d been thinking about Castiel, and that always made him malleable, but Crowley nodded. Despite decided disinterest, he found himself terrified she’d say black.

“Red.”

He never worked with colours, but Cas did, once upon a time. Red: power, danger, passion.

Love.

“Dark, but...” She took a breath, took a step. Hovered a hand over his heart. “By the Goddess, you’re just so in love.”

They stood there for a moment or two, just breathing. “...You say that like I don’t know.”

Gilda drew her hand back, looked up to respond, but they were both startled by a sound from inside.

Organ music.

“That’s your cue, love.”

She smiled, scurried off, and Crowley found Castiel three rows back, with a gold star sticker on his tie.


	26. Abacomany

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by dust.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to go up the first day of spring... Missing that, the full moon... Missing that, uploading the next chapter in the same day.

Spring is a time of rebirth: a time to begin yourself anew— get out of the house finally. It’s also when they clean.

Castiel was looking at a quartz point identical to four other quartz points he owns and wondering if he needed it while Crowley checked collection dates on their herb reserve. “How many geodes can a person possibly need?”

Cas kept the quartz. “You would be surprised.”

“I’m just suggesting, more than a dozen of anything is excessive.”

“Twelve isn’t many friends.”

“No,” he replied, emptying a jar of petals into the trash, “it’s excessive.”

He rolled his eyes, and took a look at the mantle. Their house had become an odd conglomeration of sterile spaces and tchotchke clutter. The mantle was Cas’s doing. The was a truly massive hunk of quartz (too much quartz? never) next to his religious texts— which Crowley had insisted stay out of the office— a smattering of firestarters, a bowl of potpourri he really needed to change, and a piece of black tourmaline, like he has in every room of the house. 

He picked up the stone, and wiped dust from the face. “I’ve been neglecting astral projection.”

“Thinking of getting back into it?”

“I’d like to.” Castiel replaced the tourmaline and made his way into the kitchen, eyeing the home for missed spots. Still needed to wash the crown moulding.

“Is that like riding a bike? Just hop back into the metaphysical?”

“I can’t say. I don’t know yet.”

He was washing out a jar that had previously held expired spices. “I look forward to re-meeting that witch I fell in love with.” He turned off the water, and paused. “...I should rephrase that.”

Castiel cocked an awaiting eyebrow.

“I can’t find how...” Crowley held the jar by the lip, white washcloth in the other hand. Best to keep the eating-dishes and working-dishes separate. “Everyone changes, I mean. Look at me, I used to do nothing but divination and curses.”

“Now you do very little besides divination and curses.”

He pointed accusingly with the jar. “I have not cursed anyone yet this week, and it physically pains me.” He set the jar aside, and picked up the next. He frowned at the numbers, despite setting it in the keep pile. “You’ve got to admit, you’ve changed more than I have.”

“I’m a person in flux.”

“You’re an old soul.” And he set the dandelion seeds aside.

“...Does that bother you?”

Crowley looked up, curiously. Crooked a brow. “Honestly, kind of miss the old spiritualist. You know, the one with an amethyst in his pocket, bruises from where he fell out of bed trying to astral travel. Late to lunch because the clouds were so beautiful.”

He smiled, nostalgic. “You hated when I was late.”

“I hated everything.” Crowley blinked, and unscrewed the top of a mason jar.

“I think I’ll try more projection. I heard someone was starting an astral fight club.”

“Good.” He screwed it shut. “Kick their ass.”

“I intend to.” he said, stretching for a dish rag to start on that moulding.

“...Some things I don’t miss.” Cas turned back, but Crowley was still at the sink. “Still stood like they had you in JROTC, thousand-yard stare. Everyone thought you were military. Had trouble getting back in your body, I think.”

He nodded lightly.

Crowley put his hands on the rim of the sink, water overflowing from a jar sat in the basin. “I worried about you a lot back then. Slept by my car keys a couple nights, in case you forgot where you were.”

It wouldn’t be the first time; he’s a sleepwalker, normally. 

Trying to be casual (and failing), “I never believed in past lives until I met you.” He flicked the faucet off, and left the jar upside-down on a ritual rag. “There’s no way I’ve been on this Earth longer than you have.”

Castiel wrung the dishrag. “...You remember that time I tried spirit keeping?”

“ _ No _ , don’t remind me!”


	27. Amniomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by placenta.

Cas was his high school mythology teacher’s pet. He was quite the pagan enthusiast (for obvious reasons), and he thinks the man saw himself in that front row seat. At the end of the semester, he gave Cas a replica Venus of Willendorf. Cas loves that statuette.

Crowley hates it.

“Her nipples are down to her navel— you can’t let children see this thing!”

“That is one of many reasons we don’t allow children in this house.”

“It’s obscene!”

“It’s natural.”

“We don’t need a fertility symbol!” he reiterated.

“It can’t do any harm.”

Crowley glared at it with a wrinkled nose. Grace leapt to the shelf and nuzzled it; Crowley motioned emphatically. “Your cat wants to get pregnant!”

“Good luck to her, then. She’s spayed.”

The feline stretched to sniff Crowley, now at eye-level. He puffed air in her face, and she vacated— only to hop on the couch and under Castiel’s awaiting hand. Finding his spot occupied, Crowley went to the kitchen instead. 

Almonds, bananas, carrot sticks; when did his fridge become a Whole Foods? “Don’t we have anything that’ll give me cancer?”

“Ice cream?”

“Fertility food.”

“There’s chocolate in the freezer.”

“Aphrodisiac.”

Castiel shifted to see over the back of the sofa; Grace hopped up to join the conversation (sure, Cas’s movement may have startled her away, but Crowley knows better). “Crowley, what’s this about?”

“I hate children!” he shouted, stabbing a gala apple with a steak knife. 

Cas rose from the couch; his partner was having another breakdown. “Do you  _ want _ children?”

He sawed the fruit messily in half. “ _ God _ , no. Look at me! People would think I was abducting the brat.”

“Then why is this an issue?”

The lawyer held half the apple still as he twisted the knife back and forth, grinding out the seeds—and his feelings. “Look at  _ you! _ ” Cas stared him down; he left the knife to clatter on the cutting board in a puddle of fresh-wrung apple juice. “...Don’t you want kids?”

He cocked his head. “I’ve thought of it.” Then, leaning in, “I also thought I’d be fathering them with a woman.”

It was a ridiculous thought; tasked with repopulating the earth, Castiel would sooner evolve asexual reproductive organs than conjugate with a woman. If he didn’t think the Kinsey scale was outdated rubbish, he’d test a six. Crowley scoffed. 

“Exactly.”

“I figured you’d at least adopt. You’re the kind of sympathetic to reform a congregation of guttersnipes.”

Castiel’s face softened, and he reached for a hunk of haphazardly (incidentally) peeled apple. “I find children adorable, disgusting, exhausting, and incompatible with my lifestyle.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

Chewing what had ended up being half-core, he assuaged, “If I were feeling so parental, I’d volunteer at a daycare.”

“You’re nauseatingly sentimental.” he said, because the word  _ love _ felt like a joke to him.

He nodded in agreement. “Do you want any of this?”

“Nah, I just needed the seeds for an anti-fertility spell.”

Cas spit one in his hand, and held it out. Crowley wrinkled his nose. “I think I’ll settle for what we have in the cupboard.”


	28. Alomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by salt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For kitt3nz.

Crowley was born with a wand in his hand. 

Figuratively, of course; his mother couldn’t have afforded a Caesarean, and practitioners of Pecti-Wita don’t use wands, anyway. They have daggers for that. ( _ “It’s called a dirk, you Americentric buffoon,” _ Crowley shouted, _ “and you use a dubh for working!” _ )

Of course, he had a small sewn sachet of herbs in his pocket every day of primary school, and the washing water his mother brewed never burned his bare hands like modern products would, but he took little interest in his mother’s Gaelic writings and chantings until he came home with his first black eye. Rowena cleaned him up, applied her own healing remedy, boxed his ears, and instructed him to clip the boy’s picture from the school paper. After a short ritual he’d observed a dozen times before (but never so closely), his attacker violently injured a joint during a sports game. He couldn’t play for years.

That was Crowley’s first taste of power, and if magick could give it to him, he would suffer Rowena’s every tirade for another taste of it. He’s been chasing it ever since.

Castiel, alternatively, was raised by two strict Catholics that wouldn’t let his sister wear a thing cut below the collarbone. He read his Bible recreationally, and when a girl in his Philosophy class passed around a paperback with a pentagram on the cover, he read that, too. He read everything.

It was by Raymond Buckland. He learned of the Goddess, and magick, and the ceremony to make it work. Then, when his friend taught him how to delete browsing history from the family computer, Cas (unlike other teenagers) read every Wikipedia article linked from Gerald Gardner. He read  _ The Satanic Bible _ in PDF, he printed both Keys of Solomon, and attended one disappointing seance— if a collection of chemically impaired high schoolers and a Ouija board could be called such. High school was his own mystic renaissance.

His junior year, Castiel attempted his first demon summoning. He followed every instruction in the Keys, every article online, and way past his bedtime on a school night, he called upon one of the lowest entities listed.

It didn’t come. He tried twice more before considering his spelunk into the supernatural an interesting month’s entertainment. Recycled the Keys of Solomon, started reading about marxism.

Castiel was on a walk through Fairmount when tiny flower petals rose from the foot trodden path and danced on the wind. Castiel thought, idly,  _ I wish I had someone to share this with. _

The trees towering above shook, loosing fresh spring petals in what could be mistaken for a snowstorm. He leaned against a tree, and his thoughts were overcome with an excited scream.

It jarred him. He lurched back as the forest fell still. 

He’d never heard the voice of God. He’d accepted he never would. He didn’t expect God to scream.

Cas looked up at the unnaturally unmoving needles, and chanced, “...Hello?”

The tree, buzzing beneath the bark, waved back.

A hedge witch, nature and Jesus and the great unfathomable, with his sigils, and sachets, and conversations with the trees.

Then he met Crowley— corporate narcissist striking a match to locate the contents of Castiel's witch kit from the ground cover, where it had burst open spectacularly. Frantically, he scraped his vials and minerals together, pausing only when Crowley calmly took his grimoire from inches away. Leatherbound, with the gold pentagram on the cover— it was unmistakable, made for a man out of the broom closet. He dusted it off, tucked it under his arm, casually, like a newpaper, and suggested, offhand, “Wiccan?”

He swallowed, and shook his head. He looked to his herbs for help; he’d never answered the question before. “...Hedge witch.”

His “Ah,” was both dismissive and appreciative.

Cas smiled, and stood, cradling his supplies to his chest. “And you?”

Castiel’s shadow shrouding him in the dark, Crowley smiled and said, “Satanist.”

He blinked. “Theistic, LaVeyan, or Luciferian?”

That was, apparently, the first time Crowley had been asked that.

They didn’t begin as a couple— they weren’t even friends. Crowley taught him about herbs, and tradition, and taglocks, and Castiel asked questions Crowley, in all his years of practice, had never considered. To this day, he’s still ravenous for information on Crowley’s cloaked craft, all the mysterious ancient traditions, and secrets held for generations. Castiel is a scholastic, in that sense. In all senses.

“We’re out of sage!” Crowley announced, as opposed to scribbling it on their shopping list.

“We’re using the palo santo.” His partner replied, not tearing his nose from his book.

“Since when?”

“Since I bought it.”

He shrugged it off. “I will  _ not _ miss the smell of marijuana.”

Castiel looked up; Gardner was difficult to follow  _ without _ distraction. “Sage doesn’t smell like marijuana.”

“The Milligan boy smelled me, and winked!” The lawyer got a whiff of the wood, and stuck out his lip, somehow finding it unoffensive.. “… Is this because white sage is endangered?”

Castiel glanced over his shoulder, only halfway to eye contact. “Yes.” Then he returned to his book. “And sage is a Native American tradition, anyway.”

Bringing the wood to a smoulder, Crowley acknowledged, “Still atoning for that mass genocide?”

Stubbornly, he pretended to read.

Obnoxiously, Crowley employed a piece of information he’d kept to himself since meeting the witch. “You know we’re essentially ecoterrorists?”

He scoffed, considering the remark not worthy of response.

“Really.” Crowley insisted as he trailed the smoke around the house. “Salt kills plants.” The witch smiled, as he heard Castiel’s book thump to the floor. “Hadn’t considered that, I take it? Then you really don’t want to know how many of our favourite plants are endangered. Butterfly weed, horse chestnuts, sandalwood—”

“ _ Sandalwood? _ ” Cas whined.

Smugly, “That’s right.”

Castiel twisted around, gripped the back of the couch, horrified. “Why didn’t you  _ tell _ me!?”

A stick of palo santo smouldering in his hand, Crowley shrugged. “Because I’m not a filthy treehugger.”


	29. Ichnomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by footprints.

Crowley had his back to the south, where they came from, manipulating the smoke of a stick of palo santo. Cas approached quietly, ground still soft from last night’s rain.

“Cummer go ye before, cummer go ye. If ye willin’a go before, cummer let me…” Crowley hummed as he blew out the match he’d lit it with. “Ring-a-ring a’ widdershins, a linkin’ lithely widdershins, cummer carlin’, crone, and queyn, roun’ go—!” He spun on his heel in the slick leaves, and snapped his mouth shut. “You’re late.”

Castiel shrugged. “Along with spiritual awakening comes disinterest in hurry.”

“You just have all the time in the world, don’t you?” he snarked, handing him the stick.

“It feels like more when you don’t concern yourself with it.” Castiel bathed himself in the smoke and waved it out. “I’ve never heard you sing before.”

“I wasn’t singing. It was a  _ chant _ .”

“A very melodic chant. Something about counterclockwise?”

He used his thumbnail to pop the spout on the spice jar, which they’d emptied about forever ago. Filled with powdered eggshells, now; they’re good for the soil. “Witches’ Reel. It’s a circling chant, words lead the dance.”

“What’s it for?”

“Picking who goes first, because who goes last is— agh, you’d have to know Scottish.” Crowley completed the circle, and checked it was fairly round.

Cas walked after him. “Come or go ye...?”

“If ye willin’a go before, cummer let me.” he continued.

Cas grabbed him by the arm, and guided him backwards—withershins. “Ring-a-ring withershins...?”

“Linkin’ lithely, widdershins.” he directed, a little amused, mostly flattered to be some source of interest.

Cas threaded his arm through his partner’s. “Round go we.”

Crowley looked imposed upon, but he repeated the “cummer go” bit as they returned to the beginning of the circle, and the chorus. “Ring-a-ring a’ widdershins,  _ loupin’ _ lightly, widdershins!” And they spun around as they followed the shell circle. “Kilted coats and fleein’ hair, three times three!”

The pace picked up, and Cas joined in on the words he knew.

“Ring-a-ring a’ widdershins, whirlin’ skirlin’ widdershins, de’il tak the hindmost, wha’er she be!” At the end of the verse, Crowley made a motion to repeat, then held up three fingers— _ three times three _ . 

And they spun, through the woods, around the circle, to the leave-rustling laughter of the trees. Crowley slid on the wet ground on  _ kilted coats _ , and Cas seized him at the wrist, but didn’t stop, spinning them around as he sang loud. “Cummer go ye before, cummer go ye! If he willin’a go before, cummer let me! Ring-a-ring a’ widdershins, linkin’ lithely widdershins...”

They trampled the eggshells into the dirt, broke the circle a hundred times over, and he could  _ hear _ some grand old coven beating the drums of the earth to this tune. “Cummer go ye before, cummer go ye…”

He smiled at the roll of Crowley’s Rs, the guttural tone his voice was so suited for in his native tongue. “Kilted coats an’ fleein’ hair, three times three!”

Cas had lost track of how many times they’d sung; he was having too much fun. He belted the chorus, but Crowley was louder, not so much singing as shouting. They had to separate or risk tripping over each other, spinning around what was left of the circle like the song said, and a man who usually spoke so low singing at the top of his register—at the top of his lungs. “Ring-a-ring a’ widdershins, whirlin’  _ skirlin’  _ widdershins!”

Castiel found himself the only one singing, “De’il tak the hindmost, wha’er he be!”

He’d nearly started  _ cummer go _ again when Crowley, Scottish as his Craig scotch, yelled, “Aye, now ye done it!”

Cas aborted a spin, but his coat didn’t get the message, tail of it slapping him on the other leg. “What?”

He stood in the confines of what used to be the circle, saying, “Three times three, and devil take the hindmost.”

Castiel blinked, and extended his hand. “Kiss me, you devil.”


	30. Sciomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by spirits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Jupanuma.

The curse of becoming a witch: an excess of jars, and yet, always a shortage. They’ve got an entire cabinet dedicated to empty jars, oh sure, but none of them were the  _ right _ jar. Castiel cradled about four of them in his arms while he tried to reach one on the very back of the shelf, and upon finally grasping it, nearly dropped those.

“Crowley?” he called quickly, before the panic had risen to his throat.

“Your cat, your problem.”

“For the love of God, get over here.”

That got his attention; Castiel didn’t use the Lord’s name lightly. Crowley rounded the corner, and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the jar. “Where the hell did you find that!?”

“Back of the cabinet!” Castiel accused, holding the jar as far away from himself as he could without dropping the others clutched under his arm. “You told me you buried this!”

“I  _ did! _ ”

It was made of ceramic, dark blue, lid latched down with a rubber seal. They exchanged a fearful look, and Castiel hopefully suggested, “Maybe it just looks like the jar?”

“Right,” Crowley agreed, in a tone that did not sound like a agreement, “right, probably.”

Another glance to the jar, then each other. “Crowley, I’m afraid to open this.”

Castiel’s little expedition into spirit keeping, such a catastrophe they vowed never to speak of it again— only partially for fear of invoking the thing.

The day Castiel bought the ring was the worst day of their lives. Crowley was a skeptic at the time— still is, but much less loudly— and preached that Castiel had been swindled into paying sterling price for a piece of uneven copper, advertised as having some sort of spirit attached to it. They argued over it, and they never argued, not in any way Castiel participated in. Cas went back to his apartment, to find the place broken into, and ended up spending the night in Crowley’s guest room, where the power went out, and Crowley’s dog died of bloat. Someone backed into the Bentley in the veterinarian's parking lot, and while waiting for the police, Castiel’s sister called to say their father had a heart attack.

In all the chaos, Cas had forgotten he had the ring in his pocket until he’d found it instead of his wallet— which was stolen somewhere along the way.

They’d exchanged a look, and Castiel had sealed it away in a dark blue ceramic jar, which Crowley disposed of.

They haven’t had an argument like that since.

The two witches stared at each other, and the jar, before Crowley announced, “I’m burying it.”


	31. Bletonomancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Divination by tides.

The tide lapped at his toes, reached out and retreated, like the first twenty times he tried to hold Crowley’s hand.

He did, finally, during a Charmed rerun they frustratedly spoke over, Crowley scratching behind Juliet’s ear when she hopped onto the sofa beside him. Castiel finally worked up the courage to brush their knuckles, and Crowley took his hand, kissed the back of it, and laced their fingers for the duration of the show. It wasn’t as cute when his arm was being flung about while Crowley ranted the inaccuracy of a depicted demon summoning. Quite the conversation  _ that _ was.

The ocean tickled his heels, gently, like a child tugging his coattails. Cas inhaled, closed his eyes, tasted salt on the sides of his tongue. “Tell me again.”

Crowley stood not far off, hands in the pockets of his trousers to keep them warm. “You heard me.”

He looked to the lake. “She hasn’t.”

With a deep sigh, he leaned against the tidal wall. “You’re the romantic; I really had expected you to keep track of anniversaries, and all that.” Castiel was a dreamer, never quite certain is he was awake, reading star charts from their reflection off the water. “Old Scottish tradition. You pay a maiden’s father in sheep or what-have-you, take a year to test-drive the girl. Either marry the woman, or send her home with a couple bastard kids to feed.”

“You told me your craft was secular Satanic.”

A moment of silence rang out across the waves. “I told you a lot of things.”

Conversationally, Cas continued with a cock of his head, “You said we were as serious as we were going to get.”

“By all standards, we’re as intimate as two separate sacks of meat can be; no reason to get the bloody public involved.”

“Why are we here?”

“Because it’s been a year and a day since you moved in, and my mother will have my head if we don’t at least handfast,” he snapped.

Castiel met his narrowed gaze, looking rather like a small dog that knew better than to bar tiny teeth. Feet in the water, he held out his hand.

Crowley balanced by the wall, using his free hand to hook around the back of his loafers in turn, and leave them in a nice line beside Cas’s “abbhorent” sandals. (He woke him up in the middle of the night; what had he expected him to wear?)

The sand was store-bought, the lake man-made, but the water held him steady as Crowley joined in the ankle-height surf. He grimaces at the wetness, how the sand would stick to his soles and clog up the drain of the shower, he’d need the Bentley detailed again— and Cas took his hand, and every screaming bird in the suburban walking trail shut their mouths. Two men standing in a Pennsylvania lake, locked in a handshake, with hearts beating out their chests. The moon wasn’t full, because the Roman calendar and lunar have never quite agreed, but it certainly looked that way, beaming down on them in something like a smile.

“Isn’t there a ribbon?” Castiel asked.

Crowley swallowed, to keep from clearing his throat. “That’s Gardnerian bollocks. Old English, it just meant a handshake, and Scottish used the word for—”

“Marriage.”

He didn’t have to look so smug about it; Crowley tugged, and the other man stumbled as they walked, hand-in-hand, back to their belongings. “If you must force Western interpretations on an ancient custom… something like that.”

By all intents, nothing changed that night, but it crept into Castiel’s mind that the birds didn’t bother him quite so much, that Grace lost interest in the kitchen herbs, that the Milligans moved to Indiana quite suddenly. Crowley scoffed at the accusation he was somehow involved, feigning apathy to the fact he’d been trying for years, but they still up and left on their own. Things were quiet. Comfortable in each others’ company. Perfectly content as they were, forevermore.

A few weeks later, they sign the license and are legally married.

You know. For the taxes.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, what a ride! This little idea I spitballed during a walk in the woods with my girlfriend turned into quite the community, and I'm deeply appreciative to everyone who tagged along. This is my longest fic to date, and will likely remain so for quite some time (I don't want to say definitely but... at least for a long while).
> 
> Being the end of this piece, I am no longer accepting requests, but if you write something for the 'verse (which anyone is welcome to) I'll approve it as a related work. I'm still offering free tarot readings [here](https://stardusttheforgotten.tumblr.com/ask) to keep the magick alive.
> 
> Thank you all for the patience, support, and above all, interest. Witch on.


End file.
